Conventional roll and bread dividing and shaping machines for making rolls and breads include means for sizing and shaping baking dough to ultimately provide rolls and/or bread of desired predetermined size and weight. This has generally been accomplished through the use of a piston-housing arrangement wherein one or more pistons, each fixed in size and operating mode, are used in conjunction with the housing to provide predeterminedly sized and shaped areas, within the housing, for receiving and forming pieces of dough of desired size, weight and shape. Such a machine is quite efficient and requires only a single piston-housing arrangement if only rolls or breads of a single predetermined size, shape and weight are desired. However, if a variety of different types of rolls and breads of different sizes, shapes and weight are required, then, in such case, it is necessary to substantially provide a corresponding number of different piston-housing arrangements for each size, shape and weight of each roll and bread desired for each roll and bread dividing and shaping machine. Inasmuch as each piston-housing arrangement is quite expensive, conventional roll and bread dividing and shaping machines are usually purchased with one piston-housing arrangement, and possibly one spare to enhance versatility of the machine.
To overcome the above shortcomings associated with conventional roll and bread dividing and shaping machines, it has been suggested to employ a piston-housing arrangement wherein spaced apart fixed pistons of different sizes, each fixed in size, degree of movement and operating mode, are employed so that a single housing could produce more than one size roll or bread at the same time. This, indeed, has been a well-received advance. However, unfortunately, it still lacks the versatility and flexibility to produce many different types, sizes, shapes and weights of rolls and breads. Once such an arrangement of pistons has been fixed in the housing, the size and position of the piston and its degree of movement within the housing is fixed and cannot be altered. Thus, to provide the necessary operating range for making many different rolls and breads, as in the past, two or more of such multiple piston-housing arrangements will be required for each roll and bread dividing and shaping machine.
U.S. Pat. Nos. 934,417 to Overkamp, 1,763,345 to Devlin and 1,826,031 to Streich disclose various means for adjusting dough divider machines so that desired size pieces of dough may be produced. In the case of the Devlin and Streich patents, the mechanisms disclosed are cumbersome and impractical for commercial application. In the case of all three of the above patents, the machines disclosed are not adapted to make both roll pieces and bread pieces.